Film

Rango

Name: Rango
Genre: Animation, Comedy, Family, Western, Adventure
Released: 2011
Cast: Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Ned Beatty, Bill Nighy, Abigail Breslin

Rango is a big, weird swing — a computer-animated Western that plays it straighter and stranger than any cartoon aimed at kids has any right to. Gore Verbinski shoots it like Sergio Leone, all squints and standoffs and dust, then fills it with Johnny Depp's jittery voice work and a mariachi owl chorus. Gorgeous, funny, occasionally properly menacing.

TMDb rating

3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love animated films that treat the Western as a playground, with a chameleon hero whose bravado is half performance and whose jokes land on the scruffy, sun-cooked details of the frontier.

Skip it if you want a brisk, kid-first cartoon with constant gags; this one lingers on mood, dusty stillness and strange surreal detours, and its humour is drier than the family label suggests.

What it asks of you: Settle in for just under two hours that unfold at a loping, deliberate pace, with long quiet stretches and visual texture you'll need to notice rather than be handed.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Lego Movie2014

Genre pastiche and giddy visual invention wrapped around a hero mistaken for the chosen one — the same reluctant-legend comedy engine as Rango, with jokes for every age in the room.

But Its manic pace and constant meta jokes can feel exhausting if you're after something drier or more deadpan.

Kung Fu Panda2008

An unlikely, undeserving hero forced into a legendary role he has to grow into — Rango's fake-it-till-you-make-it arc, but with kung fu instead of six-shooters.

But Broader and more slapstick than Rango's dusty wit, more interested in gags than atmosphere or style.

Chicken Run2000

Aardman's stop-motion prison-break thriller borrows the same tense, cinematic Western grammar Rango loves, right down to the mysterious stranger who rides in to save the day.

But Stop-motion's chunkier, homelier look is a world away from Rango's photorealistic desert sheen.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Rango

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Chinatown1974

Verbinski built Rango's central mystery — a town's water secretly stolen and hoarded by a corrupt official — directly on Chinatown's plot, moral rot and all, under a sunbaked frontier town instead of 1930s L.A.

The film Rango's plot is secretly borrowing from — a Los Angeles water conspiracy dressed as a private-eye noir, all dust, greed, and men who own the drought.

But Slow, bleak, and thoroughly adult; there is no cartoon lizard here to lighten the mood.

Zootopia2016

A fully imagined animal civilization, a scrappy underdog forced to prove herself, and a real mystery worth solving — Rango's world-building ambition taken even further.

But Its buddy-cop energy and city setting trade Rango's lonely frontier mood for something busier and brighter.

Shrek2001

Fairy-tale tropes turned inside out with real bite, and a hero who'd rather not be the one everyone's counting on — Rango's irreverent DNA, a decade earlier.

But Broader pop-culture gags and a softer visual style than Rango's painterly desert palette.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs2009

Loud, hyperactive, visually inventive comedy from directors with the same appetite for anarchic gags and go-for-broke set pieces that Verbinski brings to Rango.

But Pure sugar-rush silliness with none of Rango's slower, drier Western atmosphere.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs poster

The Mitchells vs. the Machines2021

A family thrown into an absurd, escalating crisis, told with restless visual imagination and real warmth under the jokes — Rango's mix of heart and chaos, modernised.

But Contemporary and screen-obsessed where Rango is deliberately old-fashioned and dusty; a different flavour of weird.

Coco2017

Another animated film that commits fully to a specific cultural setting and visual identity rather than playing it safe, trading tumbleweed for music and colour.

But Warmer and more sincere throughout, with little of Rango's absurdist comic edge or genre spoofing.

Home on the Range2004

Disney's own, much gentler stab at an animated Western — cattle, outlaws, a town in peril — useful if you want the setting with none of Rango's weirdness.

But Noticeably tamer and less inventive; the film that shows exactly what Rango deliberately refused to be.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly1966

Verbinski shot Rango like a Leone film on purpose — the squint, the standoffs, the score — making this the source code for everything that makes Rango's Western posturing land.

Sergio Leone's operatic Western is the exact visual language Rango is imitating — extreme close-ups, long silent standoffs, a landscape as merciless as any character in it.

But Nearly three hours long and paced for tension, not jokes; patience is the price of admission.

Watership Down1978

Same premise as Rango stripped of its comic armour — reluctant animals forced to become leaders and fighters to save a home under threat — showing how dark the exact same story can get.

Another animated animal story about a small, unprepared community facing an existential threat to their home and water — except played for grief and dread instead of laughs.

But Genuinely traumatic for a lot of people who watched it young; this is not a comedy and it does not pull punches.